Chapter 17 — The Price Tag

My mother began weeping.

“You tricked us, Noelle!

You lied to your own family!” “No,” I said, sliding my phone back into my clutch.

“You decided who I was thirty years ago, without ever bothering to actually know me.”

I looked at my sister, sobbing beside a silent Spencer, and I found, to my own surprise, that the resentment I had carried for her for years had evaporated, leaving only a deep and weary compassion.

She had been raised in the same toxic system I had.